With development of mobile Internet technologies, especially with emergence and popularization of intelligent terminals such as a mobile phone and a tablet computer, more users access a network by directly using these terminals. In addition, with rapid development of terminal operating systems and hardware performance, many pieces of software that are previously used on a computer can be used on an intelligent and miniaturized mobile terminal, and especially, social software is relatively frequently used. The software generally belongs to instant messaging software, and a connection to a network has characteristics of burstiness, timing, and the like. A type of instant messaging software is used as an example. The software sends one heartbeat packet every two minutes on an operating system of a terminal, so that the terminal periodically notifies a server of a status of the terminal. A network controller therefore needs to transmit dozens of pieces of network signaling, such as access signaling and bearer establishment signaling. After transmission is completed, the network controller releases air interface resources in 7-15 seconds. In one month, although a user who uses the instant messaging software does not perform any operation, 22320 heartbeat packets are sent. This is equivalent to consuming a signaling processing capability of sending 22320 SMS messages or is equivalent to a signaling processing capability of making more than ten thousand calls, but produces traffic of only 1.83 megabytes.
It can be learned that when the terminal uses the instant messaging software, a large amount of network signaling may be produced to maintain a connection to the server, and the produced network signaling is merely used for transmission of very few bytes. This signaling may cause interference to a normal service of the network. In addition, considering a future development prospect of the network, a large quantity of terminals may be connected to the network. Similar to sending an instant message, many terminals may intermittently send data with little content and a short length to the network, and sending frequency may be quite low. However, an increasing quantity of terminals may consume a large quantity of network signaling resources.